Rise in UK knife attacks leads to a crackdown and stokes public anxiety
A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.
A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.
“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”
In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.
Before people come in and use this as an argument against gun control, these attacks kill far fewer people per attack.
The homicide rate in the US is about 6-7 times that in the UK per 100,000 population. I'd take our situation any day of the week.
Last time I looked into this properly, knife crime in the US was actually roughly the same frequency as that in the UK. The difference is that knife-based murders stand out in the UK, whereas in the US nobody pays attention because the problem is dwarfed by the much greater problem of rampant gun crime.
But if the rate of knife attacks are currently the same, then logically it would make sense that knife attack rate would be much greater in the US than UK if guns were to be banned because some percentage of the current gun crime rate would convert to knife crimes. I guess the US is just a more violent place in general.
Just turn on the tele. In Europe there is a shocking amount of nudity to an American, and in America there is a disturbing amount of violence to a European.
Yes those are both true. What's your point?
My point is, you don't even need to look up the stats to see that it is true, just turn on the TV. Entertainment and media is a reflection of culture.
The mass stabbing in Australia the other week had a victim count that wouldn’t even make national news in America, but in Australia it was so bad that the pope commented
When you are done tripping over yourself to silence those you disagree with consider this, both are treating the SYMPTOM not the disease
The fun thing about the US is that the people opposed to dealing with the symptom are also usually opposed to dealing with the disease.
Right? I've long said that Democrats should just pivot and say, "Okay you don't want to work on getting guns out of the hands of criminals? Okay whatever. You agree part of this is a result of mental health? Okay, then let's pass Universal healthcare with guaranteed access to therapy and more."
Last I checked, physicians must treat both symptoms and diseases simultaneously. E.g., the Shock. The bleeding. The excess fever.
Similarly there's no reason both cannot be tackled simultaneously here as well; for the root cause is often far more difficult to address than treating symptoms.
So yes, address the root causes such as:
... But also address the symptoms, which means that when someone does inevitably fall through the cracks, they're not given free and easy access to gun that is lethally more effective than a knife.
You might not have noticed, but I am a moderator. If I wanted to silence you, I certainly could. I do not use that power to do so just because I disagree with someone. You are free to disagree with me and anyone else in this community as long as you follow the community rules.
Your first thought was to head off an argument against your train of thought, you don't need your mod powers to do what I described. I do appreciate you having more restraint than more than one Reddit mod I've encountered thoigh
Of course I would need mod powers to silence you. I have no other way of silencing you. Your replying to me proves that. You're not a victim. Your voice is as heard as everyone else's here.
I didn't mean physically silence, more rhetorically silence them by assuming an argument before you were ever engaged, it comes across as an attempt to restrict discourse. If that was not your intent I apologize
That is not rhetorical silence either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence
Assuming an argument someone is going to make in no way silences anyone. Especially when I didn't specify who I was talking to. All you had to say was, "I don't agree." Instead, you decided to point fingers and make this personal by saying:
Notice that the multiple other people who replied to me both did not make a personal attack and did not feel silenced, and if you want to apologize for something, apologize for that.
Furthermore, while I do not moderate discussions I am involved with, personal attacks are against community rules, so I hope you don't think this is something you can normally get away with.
We could have had a legitimate discussion, but you decided to come in feeling like this was personal. I have no interest in discussing anything with you now.
The only way to protect yourself from a bad guy with a sword is a good guy with a spear.
Narwhal tusk laddie, do you have no style?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50870309
Narwhal is cool, but do you want to use the good Narwhal on just anyone? I want to use it for special occasions or that certain someone.
Blades that can kill will never be banned. Therefore it's a problem with the people not with the blades and that's where the solution will lie.
err, they were killed by a sword, this can be banned tho
Banning the sword does not delete the sword. It will still exist, killing a person with a sword is already illegal and people still do it. It's a much deeper problem
That is one of the arguments most often used against gun control as well.
The difference is people in the UK don't need guns, there's no use for them except "in rural areas". While yeah you can ban swords, the people stabbing people with swords could just as easily switch to kitchen knives . And I don't know how I'm going to chop my veggies if we go down the road of banning every item people use to kill eachother.
The UK has severe mental health issues due to underfunding of health services. We also have severe poverty growth, we have alot of worsening of of situations for people that we need to address.
The UK is a society where violent crime is pretty uncommon. The homicide rate in the UK was 1.0 per 100,000 population in 2023. That has been broadly trending downwards in recent decades, after rising during the late 20th century and hitting a peak at c1.8 per 100,000 in 2003. The US is a much more violent society: their homicide rate is around 6.4 per 100,000 population.
Killers are always going to find weapons - if you ban guns they'll find knives, if you ban knives they'll kill with something else. One difference is that a killer on a knife rampage is going to kill a lot fewer people before they're stopped than a killer with a gun. I guess killing with a knife is a more 'involved' act than just pointing a gun and clicking the trigger, so the bar for someone stabbing with a knife is probably a bit higher than killing from several metres away with a gun.
But part of it is a societal thing - my hunch is that (in relative terms) society in the UK and most other rich Western liberal democracies just instills in people an instinctively higher value on human life. You see it in US exceptionalism in use of the death penalty, the frequency of police killings, etc. I don't want to exaggerate the difference - the US still has far fewer murders than Colombia or South Africa or Brazil - but there are other Western countries like Canada or Finland where guns are still pretty widely owned (albeit not quite to the extent of the US) that don't have the same problem of violence as the US.
Why do people in the US not "in rural areas" need guns?
Because how else do they shoot the black folk?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Although the number of fatal stabbings has mostly held steady in England and Wales over the past 10 years, headline-grabbing attacks and an overall rise in knife crime have stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more.
Of the 244 fatal stabbings in England and Wales in the 12 months ending with March 2023 — the most recent figures available — 101 were committed with kitchen knives, far surpassing any other type of blade, according to the Office of National Statistics.
But the uptick in knife crime and a steady drumbeat of shocking attacks, including those that killed Ronan Kanda, Daniel Anjorin and three people in Nottingham last year, has pushed the issue to the forefront.
And certain types of blades are already illegal, including switchblades and so-called zombie knives, which come in various sizes, have cutting and serrated edges, and feature text or images suggesting they should be used to commit violence, according to the 2016 law banning them.
The details of stabbing attacks differ, but Pooja Kanda said she sees similarities — chiefly the emotional what-comes-next: bewildered, shattered families, anger that such a thing could happen to a child or anyone again.
The U.K. Home Office said in a statement that crimes with straight swords are rare and were not raised by the police as a specific concern, so officials focused instead on zombie-style knives and machetes in the law that takes effect in September.
The original article contains 1,211 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
First, they came for the Vickers Model 1931, and I said nothing.
British government needs to teach everyone what is good and what is bad; teach them how to be nice to one another and hold hands.
The UK is so fucking stupid with their crusade against pocket knives. Laughing stock of the world.
If you don't know the difference between a pocket knife and a sword, you're probably not in any position to call anyone a laughing stock.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because the only way anyone is going to believe the UK is the "laughing stock of the world" is if they've never spoken to any of the people who make up that world.
It's the USA and has been for decades, peaking with Republicans like George Bush and Donald Trump. It's not even a close contest.